Oh, I'll show you what bad CGI REALLY is!

Last week, Total Film posted an article on the 20 Worst Movie CGI Moments. And, in looking through the list...I have to wonder if they really know what bad CGI is.




Yes, Sam Jackson's death in Deep Blue Sea is horrific (horrifically AWESOME!). With that and Shark Attack 3 to open things up, I had a feeling that they might be onto something fun. Then I read on...and realized that whoever wrote this article has never watched the SciFi Channel on a Saturday night (though I'm not sure if that says more about me or Chris Hicks).

It's one thing if you want to stick to scenes in big budget movies like Watchmen or Transformers and that sort of movie. That's a whole different discussion. But when you start off by mentioning a couple of low budget shark movies, well, they just can't compete. A movie like The Matrix has a lot more money to work with than the likes of Shark Attack 3. It's not a level playing field. And it's unfair to lump them into the same category.

Besides...if you want to talk about bad CGI? Let's start by taking a look at something like Attack of the Sabertooth.







That's from the friggin movie! A movie like Transformers puts more effort into an animatic!

And you want to talk about surfing? Die Another Day has not-a-goram-thing on Escape From L.A.

Do you really think that any thing about this looks better than what the accomplished in Die Another Day? Come on, dude!

Or, let's look at Event Horizon:

Do you really think that the opening sequence full of shitty looking floating debris looks better than anything in Lord of the Rings? And don't even get me started on Johnny Mnemonic or Lawnmower Man and their all CGI depictions of the interweb.

And let's be fucking honest, the only reason the effects looked bad in King Kong was because of how much Peter Jackson and Weta Workshop accomplished on LotR. Sure, the dinosaurs weren't the best CGI effects, but the damn monkey looked amazing.

The Wachowskis, the Bays, the Bruckheimers in this world will never put out the kind of movies that are chock full of bad effects and pure awesome-osity that the Lions Gates, Nu Images and Asylums will.
It's just a different mentality.

And not just among the film makers. As a viewer, I go into something like The Matrix with certain expectations. I expect to see something to write home about. When I pop in something like Raging Sharks, I expect to get a good chuckle and maybe be entertained for a few minutes. So, when I see a goofy alien, or a bad CGI shark, I laugh. I make fun of it. And while I may expect it to be bad, that doesn't mean that it's more inexcusable for a big budget movie to have a little shoddy CGI in it. Hell no. After seeing what people are doing on average home computers and with little money, I expect MORE out of the low budget flicks. When you have all the money in the world to spend on your movie, you damn well better hire the best. When you're on a shoestring, it's about getting the biggest bang for your buck. And when you don't...when you get something that looks like it was made using the airbrush in MS Paint...that's the CGI to get offended by.

Great Movie Gadgets Part 2: Attack of the Sabretooth

All I know is that I want my file transfers to look like this.

Some weird little girl throwing files into a folder. Is that some custom Linux file transfer? That doesn't looks like anything I've seen in Ubuntu...

Attack of the Terrible Graphics

Let's let it be known first that I LIKED Attack of the Sabretooth. It was no Octopus 2 or Raging Sharks, but it was a fun movie to watch. I'm not here to review it though. I don't care about that right now. What I want is to take a look at some of the effects. In fact, I want to take a look at the CGI overall.

For the most part, it was really well done. This was a very low budget film that still managed to produce a CGI sabretooth that looked good.


The eyes look a little lifeless, but overall, it's a damn good looking CGI creature. The sabretooths did look good. There's no denying that. However, the issue is with the sequence at the end.

This is the 'statue' atop the building. Notice that the graphics look like something out of an original Playstation game.


Yeah...it looks even better in the same shot as a person. I've seen animatics that looked better. In fact, that's what this looks like to me. It looks like a rough idea of what it was going to look like that never got finished. It's inexcusable after how good the sabretooths looked for them to have something this blatantly bad in the movie.